


conundrums, miscalculations, and one giant mistake

by MatildaSwan



Category: Inhuman Condition (Web Series)
Genre: Episode s01ep14, F/M, Gen, alcohol consumption, introspective, relationships are tag because they're canon not because the fic is actually about them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 23:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7864999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MatildaSwan/pseuds/MatildaSwan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reading people is what she did, it was how she was, and she should have seen this coming. Only she hadn't and the explosive potential of her mistake was unimaginable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	conundrums, miscalculations, and one giant mistake

**Author's Note:**

> So I rewatched the series to fact check and in the process realised there are least three different ways to interpret the actions of each character. Now I am at least 40% less certain of the validity of the initial response which prompted writing this in the first place. Consider this one possible parallel reality rather than a canon accompaniment.

Michelle stared out the kitchen window, open bottle of beer slowly numbing her fingers, her brow furrowed and eyes still stinging. She had broken confidence: broken her oath and her word and it tore at her. The moment flashed though her mind again and she felt her gut wrench and her heart seize as another wave of panic washed over her before settling in her stomach and mingling with the self-disgust gnawing at her intestines. It had been there since Clara had started making demands.

She knew it was the wrong thing to do just as she knew it was the only thing to do. If Clara had walked out that door again Michelle knew she would never come back. She knew that the next time she saw the name Clara Walker would have been reading the obituary section of the local paper, maybe accompanied with a gossip review of the escapades and eventual demise of the Angry Dead Girl. Michelle couldn't bear that: she had gotten attached and she cared and she wasn't ready to say goodbye yet. She wasn't ready and Clara had pushed and Michelle had broken.

Completely, this time, not the crack she had felt in her heart when Clara walked out the first time. Properly broken, along every fissure and micro fracture she had developed over the past six months. She had made the worst call possible; she had let go of her patient's confidence and with it her own.

She hung her head and shook it vigorously, hair grazing her ears as she tried to shift her thought patterns. It didn't work. She sighed and stared at the bottle in her hand before bringing it to her lips: cold liquid crisp on her throat.

Clara's words rang in her ears and she shuddered. Undergrad psych course reared to the front. Sociopath: antisocial personality disorder, often marked by behaviours showing a lack of empathy and an absence of remorse. Michelle knew that couldn't be her, not with the pool of regret gnawing at her stomach and the waves of nausea still emanating from it hours later. But messing with people's live, manipulation? On that one, she wasn't so sure.

She knew they knew each other and she knew they were both her patients. But that had happened before: the city wasn't that big, specialists in her field are in short supply, and she had needed to treated both sides of an acquaintance in the past. She had tried to keep these two separate, to steer the conversation towards something else whenever their names had appeared in sessions and stay on track. She had tried to stay professional, to stay in control of the situation and keep the two apart.

And maybe a part of her had wanted Linc to open someone and start healing. And maybe she had hoped that having someone to live for would be enough for Clara. But she had never wanted those two someones to be each other.

Then one day that's exactly what they were. Suddenly Linc and Clara weren't just acquaintances anymore and it was impossible to keep them separate. Her patient pool was undeniably cross contaminated and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it without abandoning one or both of them.

Maybe Clara was right, maybe she was a manipulative bitch, but she could never had made this happen. But she should never have treated both of them the first place that, at least, was solely her fault.

She should have recognised the name when the government secured her services. Recognised Linc's name from Clara's sessions, from Will's rants, from session with her other Lycan patients. She should have flatly refused to take his case instead of stopping at the polite suggestion that a Lycan counselor would be more appropriate she had given the court. But their response made it quite obvious that was the last thing they had in mind and instead of trying to change it Michelle had bit her tongue instead.

After all, he needed help. That was her job and whatever political machinations might have been going on were secondary secondary. Then she had read his files and understood the ferocity of Linc's attack. She had remembered everything she had ever read about his lawyer and Cal Tully's other clients. She had felt the waves of animosity, disdain, hatred, emanating off Linc during sessions and a voice that sounded suspiciously like Will's started nagging in her ear that maybe he was dangerous. For a moment she though it might actually be true.

Until she had watch Linc's video and she knew she had been mistaken. She wish she had realised it sooner. The nagging between her ears had gotten too loud and she had started to forget she had never been treating a terrorist or an insurgent any more than she had been treating a political activist. Linc was above all just a young man still morning the loss of his partner.

Somewhere deep down she knew that encouraging Linc to see the future as a possibility meant him finding someone, having someone to be with again. She had to have known he would open up to someone he already knew. She should have known, should have guessed, who he meant when he said he had met someone. If she had though about it harder, if she hadn't been so glad and relieved and proud of his progress, she might have stayed critical, might have figured out who he meant sooner before being blindsided. Not that she could have told him, but for a while it looked that mightn't even be necessary, that everything would be okay.

For a moment it looked like things were on the right path. “I might even find a way to save him,” she remembered saying to Will. She thought he would have understood the joke, that she'd never “saved” anyone in her life. She though that he would have laughed, like she had been on the inside. Except he hadn't, because he thought she was serious. That's what he though she did. No, saving people is what he thought _she_ thought she did. Truth was if any of her patients ever needed saving they did it themselves. She was just there to bear witness. Instead of laughing Will had asked if Linc was worth the work, as if anyone wasn't worth the effort. Instead of explaining her words she felt the need to defend Linc's actions and take a dig at Will's profession, just as he had taken one at hers.

Then Clara had kept her session and it became very obvious that everything was definitely not okay. She should have found a way to prepare for this. She should have found a way to navigate the minefield she had helped create before it blew up in their faces. Except she hadn't and this was one of the biggest mistakes of her life. She had well and truly erred and the fallout was astronomical.

She finished her drink, walked across the kitchen and dropped the empty bottle in the recycling. She heard the glass shatter and she hung her head, drooping against the sink as her eyes burnt. She would deal with that later. She pushed herself away from the bench, turned to open the fridge and looked at the unfinished carton of beer.

She reached for another bottle and the cold air hit her slightly numb fingers. She noticed the buzzing in her ears, stopped short of the next bottle and thought better of it. She had work to do, still had other patients and a mountain of paperwork to catch up on. Shutting the fridge and walking back to her desk, she pushed away the gnawing feeling in the base of her stomach as best she could: opened her notebook and started transcribing.


End file.
